Buck's Blog

For several years, the Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers (HAWKs)  have been running a really neat event at Historicon.  In addition to the other games we run at the convention that are targeted toward younger gamers (we dedicate a table throughout Saturday of the con to only kids’ games) we run a special event.  This event, the Armies for Kids game, involves kids who are under 10 usually using Milk and Cookies Rules (from Big Battles for Little Hands).  After the event is over, each kid gets to take away two complete, painted armies and some other goodies.  In the past we’ve provided terrain pieces, rules, tape measures, etc.

This year’s project is 25/28mm Napoleonics.  Using a combination of figures from a number donors, including the NASHCON staff, we have pieced together six sets for this year.  Each kid who plays in the game will receive a French army and an army from one of the opposing powers.  There are a handful of painted figures that couldn’t be made into units and a box of unpainted lead as well.  During the game the game master (Eric Schlegel this year) will ask the kids some history questions.  If they answer correctly, they get to take something from these extras.

The picture at the top of this post shows some of the HAWKs working on Father’s Day to assemble the donations into armies, rebase many of the figures, and make small repairs.  The picture below shows one of the armies being assembled.

This year’s donations included some old Scruby figures and other rarities that are the “missing link” between the toy soldiers of Little Wars and modern wargaming figures.  Other donations include Calpe 28mm figures and some old “small 25’s.”  We tried to match up figures by size in each child’s army, but it’s not perfect.

Next year’s project will be 40mm ACW skirmish.  We are building around a very generous donation of painted 40mm Union troops.  If you have any 40mm Confederates you’d like to donate, or any other donations you’d like to consider, please contact me at surdu@acm.org.  The donations all go to kids.  In very rare cases we’ve sold or traded some of the donations in order to purchase missing items to build complete armies.  We think this is a really nice way to do something about the “graying of the hobby” beyond complaining about it.  When you see the look on the kids’ faces, it makes the many hours spent during the year well worth the effort.

Cigar Box Battle posted a nice writeup of our NASHCON GASLIGHT game.  See it here:  http://www.cigarboxbattle.com/the-h-a-w-ks-undersea-gaslight-game-at-nashcon/

For the second year in a row a subset of the Harford Area Weekly Kreigspeilers (HAWKs) from the Baltrimore area headed down to NASHCON for the weekend of gaming.  This year’s expeditionary force was Dave, Chris, Duncan, Don, Greg, and me.

We had signed up to run 15 games throughout the weekend.  We tried to pack lightly, but 15 games in scales running from 1:2400 naval to 28mm ancients require a lot of terrain, figures, and other paraphernalia.  We rented a 12-passenger van, loaded it with our gear, and headed southward.

The drive was long — over 12 hours.  Despite some traffic snarls along the way, the trip was uneventful.  We arrived Thursday night.  Gaming doesn’t begin until 1400 on Friday, so we had lots of time to unload the van and then divvy up all the gear for our various games.

Before the gaming began, four of us took the opportunity to take a guided tour of the Battle of Franklin around the Carey House.  I didn’t know much about this battle.  Without the guide, I’m not sure we would have gotten much out of walking the area, as there were very few markers.  The guide was quite good.

We all found it interesting how many things occurred during this short engagement that gamers often complain about when those things happen to them in a war-game.  Examples are when the entire Union army marched past the Confederates encamped just 200 yards off the road they were using, a battery standing up in desperate hand-to-hand combat against determined infantry, units not moving when the commander would like them to, veteran units in entrenchments running away, but green units in the open standing, etc.  I was quite pleased that I’ve seen all of these things happen in games using the Look, Sarge family of rules.  A good set of rules should enable or allow such events while not requiring them or constraining them to take place.

Our first gaming session involved Chris Palmer’s Battle of Five Armies game with Bear Yourselves Valiantly, Duncan’s Charted Seas WWII naval game, and my G.A.M.E.R. TM  Commandos game.

Chris ran this twice, once at 1400 on Friday and again at 0900 on Saturday.

Duncan’s naval game seemed to go well despite only have two players.

Here are three shots of my WWII skirmish game, using G.A.M.E.R. TM.  I talked Steve from Age of glory into joining us for the game.  He is usually running his booth and doesn’t get time to play.

The scenario involved a group of commandos attacking a coastal villa to seize and Enigma machine.  They are supported by some partisans.  The partisans arrived too late to do more than divert some of the Germans.  The Germans were on the ropes much of the game and has half a squad head for the hills at one point.  In the end, the commandos stormed the villa but were defeated in hand-to-hand fighting with a couple of guards and two officers with pistols.

I only had two players for this game.  There were many more games being offered than gamers for this first session.  I guess that this convention is largely attended by locals who chose not to take off work on Friday to game.  Light weights!  Lots of people commented on the G.A.M.E.R. TM mechanics later.  I think if I had run the game on Saturday, I would have filled it up.  The folks like the mechanics.

Don and Greg ran a series of French and Indian War games.  Friday night it was Dr. Who during the FIW using the Dr. Who Miniatures game in a scenario based on the Curse of Fenric Tom Baker episode.  This scenario, however, involved a more modern Doctor and his companions.

Saturday morning and afternoon, Greg and Don ran Muskets and Tomahawks.  The morning session was supposed to be a series of small games that would influence the larger afternoon game.  Only two people showed up for the morning session, but they seems to have fun.  The afternoon session was over full and went really well.

They used the overgrown fort in the center of the table to divide the two smaller games for the morning session.  It looked neat and gave me some ideas for some scenarios I might run in the future.

Duncan ran his War of 1812 game using Wellington Rules.  The scenario involves an American attack to repulse the British before the Battle of New Orleans.  The game outcome was quite similar to the real battle.

Duncan has written some very nice night rules for Wellington Rules that open up the possibility for friendly fire and really limit command and control in the dark.    With my well-known dice-rolling luck, I availed myself of the friendly fire rule many times.  I had a unit fire on Dave’s unit in the flank three times and rout it.  Once they did make contact with the enemy, they didn’t last long before bugging out themselves.

Dave Wood ran two Bear Yourselves Valiantly games on Saturday, a fantasy one and a Roman one.  I didn’t get any good pictures of the Roman game, but here are two pictures of the fantasy game.  I played in the fantasy one and rolled a statistically improbable number of ones, which did not help me accomplish my objective.  In the end, I had to concede victory to the forces of evil who led my elven prince into slavery.

Duncan ran his WWII game with a mashup of LSNC WWII, A Union So Tested (ACW), and his own ideas.  He had four of six players, but the game went well with the attacking French eking out a victory.

I ran my Fate of Battle scenario, the Battle of the Mincio River.  I had four players and could have handled six.  All four players were largely running the game themselves by the end.  The French did not manage to cut the road to block the Austrians, but it was a hard-fought game.

This was a successful test of this scenario for a convention setting.

Our final event of the convention was a ten-player G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. TM underwater game.  This game, because of its unique terrain and crazy contraptions attracted numerous passers-by.  We even won an award from the Cigar Box Battle blog for superior presentation.

After a quick breakfast Sunday morning we finished loading the van and headed home.  The ride back was faster than the ride down, because we only hit one traffic snarl along the way.

Despite low attendance numbers at NASHCON that caused most of our games to have light participation and one game not go at all (Dave’s WWII Look, Sarge game), we had a good time.  The rental of the van made the trip much more comfortable than last year, so when we arrived home we all were in much better shape.

The stats:  Six HAWKs, 23 hours on the road, 13 successfully-run games, 1 games that didn’t run, and lots of lead purchased.

My daughter, Sammy, has been painting terrain pieces for members of the HAWKs for some time now.  She doesn’t enjoy painting figures, but she seems to really enjoy painting terrain.  She is relatively inexpensive, so it’s been a win-win.  The HAWKs get something painted that was deep in their painting cue, and Sam gets a few dollars to spend on whatever teenage girls spend money.

This was Sam’s most intricate project to date.  Duncan had asked Sam to paint this building he found in a flea market.

We think the building is from Grand Manner.  If you have never gotten buildings from Grand Manner, you’re missing a real treat.  They are fully sculpted inside and out.  The detail is fantastic!  They are premium priced, but worth the money.

Some years ago I bought several of their ACW buildings during a sale, where you could get a set of ACW buildings for a set price.  They painted up really nicely.

I think Sam did a terrific job on this building.

As usual, she did the entire thing herself.  I bought her a nice box for her paints, but she has been using her painting profits to get more bottles of paint, brushes, etc.

Sometimes she’ll ask me for suggestions on colors, but largely, she does this independently.  In this case, I suggested green shutters to give the building a little color.

Since the vehicle test went relatively well last week, I’ve been thinking about how to develop the armor and penetration numbers for the vehicles.  Here’s my thinking:

 

Information on armor in various parts of a vehicle can be gathered on the internet and other sources.  As this isn’t meant to be a published project, I will just do this for a handful of vehicles.  Then anyone who wants to stat up another vehicle can do so, using the formulas.  Sometimes what is reported is just the front hull.  Other times what is reported is a range (e.g., the armor on the Panther varied between 10mm and 120mm), leaving the reader to guess that 10mm was the rear hull, the turret and side armor were in the middle somewhere (about 50 – 55mm), etc.

Armor:

To compute the armor number in G.A.M.E.R., take mm or armor, round up to nearest 10, divide by 10, and add 4.  As an example, the frontal armor on a M4E8 “Easy Eight” was about 178mm, making it one of the heaviest armored vehicle fronts of the war.  A standard M4 (earliest model) was about 75mm.  Different Sherman versions varied between these two extremes.  Let’s start with the Easy Eight.  The frontal hull armor would be 178 -> 180, 180 /10 = 18, 18 + 4 = 22.  Using the same formula, the M4 would be 12.

 

Now that result is just a meaningless number until you look at penetration.

Penetration:

(Just for reference, rifles have a penetration of 1 and pistols 0.)

 

At short, medium, and long ranges, take the book value for penetration, round up to the nearest 10 and divide by 10.  As an example, the 88mm KwK 36 L/56, depending on ammunition used, had a penetration of about 120mm at 500m.  So 120 / 10 = 12.  Another example:  An ATR at short range had a penetration of about 35mm.  That would be 35 -> 40 /10 = 4.

Putting it together:

An early Tiger with an 88mm KwK 36 L/56 gun hits the front of an M4 Sherman.  The Tiger rolls d10 and adds the penetration of 12.  Let’s say he rolls a 5, that is a result of 17.  17 is greater than the 12 armor on the front of the M4, so the hit penetrates.  If he had rolled a 1, that would automatically be a “bounce.”

That same Tiger with the same roll of 5 would NOT penetrate the front of the Easy Eight.  In fact, the 88mm KwK 36 L/56 would need to hit the side or turret to penetrate, as the front of the Easy Eight is just too thick.

 

The ATR fired at the Sherman would have a penetration of 43.  If the player rolled an 8 for penetration, that would give a result of 12 compared to an armor of 12, which would indicate no penetration.

 

Yes, I know that not all armor is created equal, but it’s a good enough approximation for what is meant to be a fun skirmish game.  Of course people could fiddle with the stats to handicap their favorite vehicle.

With these formulas, anyone using the rules can quickly create the stats for their vehicles and get playing.  And I don’t have to spend the next two years doing it myself and then listening to people complain about the stats I gave their favorite vehicles.  If it was known that a particular vehicle had a weak area, the results of the formulas can be modified to suit the players’ perceptions.

 

The next step is to build the formulas to determine the movement speed in the game based on the real tank’s quoted stats.

 

I’ve also added another attribute to vehicles.  It is the maximum number of elevations that a vehicle can go UP in a single activation.  I was reading somewhere recently that the Germans were constantly surprised at the climbing ability of the Sherman.  (Of course it was a medium tank, not one of heavy tank like self-loathing American and Brits with axe to grind like to compare with the Sherman.)  So the Sherman might have a max climb of 2, while most other tanks might be a 1.  Or perhaps those numbers are 3 and 2.  I’m still working on it, but if you think about this simple mechanic, I think you’ll see how elegant it is.

Last night at the club meeting, I ran another play test of G.A.M.E.R. (which stands for the attributes of a figure in the game: Guts, Accuracy, Melee, Endurance, and Reaction).  I have been pretty happy with the way the infantry rules are working, but I have been needing to give the vehicle rules a good workout.  Last night I ran a game that was almost entirely vehicles.  It wasn’t a particularly realistic scenario, but it served its purpose.  I also wasn’t very accurate on vehicle mixes, as the scenario included some late-war tanks, even though the scenario was set in Poland in 1939.

A column of German tanks was assigned the task of pushing across the board.  They were supported by two tank-killer infantry teams, one with a panzerfaust and the other with a panzerschreck (recall that historical accuracy was not part of this event’s objective).  The Poles had two 7TPjw tanks, two Vickers E tanks, two TKs tankettes, an anti-tank gun, and an infantry team with an anti-tank rifle.

The game began badly for the Germans, with a Hetzer and a Marder getting knocked out by the two tanks on the far hill in the picture (above).  After a while it evened out and was considered a marginal German victory, since they still had two “real” tanks left at the end, and the Poles only had one.

As the objective was to give the vehicle rules a workout, I was glad to see Bill use anti-tank rifle grenades (again, not necessarily historically accurate) and a satchel charge against Chris’ 38(t).  I don’t think he ever knocked out this tank, but he immobilized it early.  The tank-on-tank action in the center of the table between Geoff and Sam (Germans) and Duncan (Poles) seemed to have about the right feel.  Duncan’s Polish AT gun had ammunition trouble or something, because it kept jamming.

Recall from previous posts that G.A.M.E.R. is designed to be played at three levels of “detail” or “resolution,” at the GM’s or players’ choice:

• Low Resolution: All infantry figures in a unit have the same G.A.M.E.R. attributes.  Wounds are all the same.  Wounds are tracked with markers on the table.  Vehicle crews aren’t tracked; if a vehicle is destroyed, all crew are killed.  If the vehicle is not destroyed, there is no effect on the crewmen.
• Medium Resolution:  All infantry figures in a unit have the same G.A.M.E.R. attributes.  Wounds are tracked on the record sheet.  Upper body wounds effect fire.  Lower body wounds effect movement.  Vehicle crews aren’t tracked; if a vehicle is destroyed, all crew are killed.  If the vehicle is not destroyed, there is no effect on the crewmen.
• High Resolution:  Each infantry figure has its own G.A.M.E.R. attributes.  Wounds are tracked on the record sheet.  Upper body wounds effect fire.  Lower body wounds effect movement.  Vehicle crewmen ARE tracked (at one of three levels of resolution, GM’s preference).  If a vehicle is hit, card flips are used to determine impact on individual crewmen.

Last night, I wanted to test the crew casualty resolution, so we played played at high resolution for vehicles and low resolution for infantry.  My preference will be to play with low or medium resolution on most cases, I think.  The extra steps required to determine which crewmen are wounded or killed as a result of a hit is usually not worth the effort.  But we tested it last night, and it worked fine.  I can see a lot of WWII gamers wanting the higher resolution.  It was fun to see that the gunner was wounded or the driver was killed and see the impact on the rest of the game.

We also tried the bog check rule (see previous post).  Woods and plowed field are considered “green,” pun intended.  When a tank moves through woods or plowed fields, it flips a card to resolve the “green” attack on it.  If the terrain succeeds in hitting the vehicle, the vehicle bogs down.  I was worried that this would be so frequent that players would get frustrated or so infrequent that players would forget to do it.  I think it was about right, but I’ll have to try it a few more times before I decide.  Rougher terrain might be considered regular or elite for bog attacks on the vehicle.  (This is how I plan to handle mine field as well.)  We had a TKs that bogged for three turns, and a German tank bogged down in the woods.

Part of the objective last night was to test the vehicle hit resolution procedure.  Geoff said that he had trouble remembering the sequence.  Most of the other folks who had played the infantry rules seemed to have picked it up quickly, but clearly G.A.M.E.R. is a paradigm that is different from what players expect.

I had a draft vehicle record card for last night’s game.  As a result of the play test, I revised the card.  Below is what I think it will look like.  When printed in full size, this looks like three 3″x5″ cards.  I think that experienced players will only need the one on the top left.  They will eventually learn the hit resolution procedure and the effects of a penetrating hit and won’t need the card, so I think that in a practical sense, a player will only need the single card.  At high resolution, the players will also need a second 3×5 card with the crew information.

I can see players printing this, cutting it into an L and then folding it to be a single 3×5 card.  On the hit resolution procedure card, I tried to show cards next to steps in which you draw a card, and a die next to the step where you roll a die.  (There is a d10 on the cards, so you could use a card and read the result instead of rolling a die if you want.)  The only “trick” on vehicle hit resolution is that you have to keep track of the hit location card, because if you don’t get a penetrating hit, the non-penetrating results are read from THAT card.  You don’t draw a different one.

As a reminder, here is what the infantry (or crew) card looks like:

I think it went pretty well last night, and the players enjoyed the game.  Sammy thinks that she likes it without vehicles better.  I need to come up with good stats for the vehicles I have in my collection, which I’m not looking forward to doing.  I’ll keep plugging away at it.  I think this game has potential.

My first public showing of G.A.M.E.R. was Sunday AM at Cold Wars 2014.  Both readers of my blog will recall several posts describing the evolution of this concept.  Though the scenario needed more Germans for balance, the game was fun, the players had a good time, and several asked when the game would be published.

I’m still tweaking the rules and the cards.  Eventually, I’d like to stabilize the cards and get some printed through a print on demand place.  My next play test will be almost all vehicles in order to test out all the vehicle rules.

Eric and several other HAWKs ran a series of Schlegel’s Ferry games.  Schlegel’s Ferry is a fictional town on the upper Chesapeake that begins as an Indian village and advances through time, seeing battles from many different wars.  I ran Schlegel’s Ferry 1664.   The games this year were separated by 50 years.

Cold Wars 2014 was a good show for me.  Dave ran two Fate of Battle games on Friday with his 25mm figures.  Friday I ran 1664 at Schlegel’s Ferry.  Saturday I ran Montmiraile from Dave’s 1814 scenario book.  Then Dave and I ran the 12-player LaRothiere game.  Saturday night Dave ran his Fastov LSNC: World War II game.  Sunday I ran a first “public” showing of G.A.M.E.R., my new WWII skirmish concept.  I didn’t buy much, because a couple of the folks I wanted to visit weren’t at the show, but there’s always Historicon.